Eerie Stories from the Middle of Nowhere

Month: July 2016

If you have listened to a few episodes of The Nowhere Dispatch, it’s probably a safe bet that you enjoy folklore, urban legends and weird local tales. I’m much the same way which is a big reason I started this podcast.

What is it about these stories that captivates us so reliably and completely?

Is it the fact that we know they probably aren’t true but we can imagine them taking place? Is it because they’re about our own hometowns?

I’m really not sure. What I’m sure of, however, is that these stories draw some people like iron filings to a magnet.

At the beginning of my trip down the road. The dirt walls rise as high as 12-15 feet.

I’m not sure exactly when I first heard about Stagecoach Road, though I believe it was sometime in high school. I just heard about it in passing, yet another local story about a haunted road. I can’t recall if I really wanted to go out there but, all these years later, the legend popped up squarely in my mind.

I figured that it was a perfect fit for this podcast because it is rife with legends and it has a strong tie to local history. Why not take a trip out there and drive the road?

At the time I recorded this podcast, I’d just been through a very difficult experience. I remarked afterwards that my trip out to the road was partially fueled by my lack of self-preservation in the face of this tough situation. I rode that adrenaline like a drug as my tires kicked up clouds of dust and I dove deeper into the guts of the forest.

It was so isolated out there. So impossibly alone. I love horror movies that focus on the loneliness and the isolation of the woods. That’s far more frightening to me than a hulking brute wielding a hockey mask and a machete at a summer camp.

The bridge I crossed on Stagecoach Road. I don’t think it’s the “haunted” bridge but it was creepy all the same. That’s not fog over the road, it’s a combination of the dust my tires kicked up and condensation on my camera lens after stepping out of the A/C in my car into the sweltering heat.

The isolation carries the real weight of the fear. I hope some of that comes through in this episode. I’m sure I rambled too much (you can actually hear my Texas accent and idioms coming through on the field recordings. I do that when I’m really nervous.) but I hope the feeling of isolation is apparent enough.

The scariest thing I saw on the road. I checked Google Maps throughout the trip but, at one point, the map dropped away and I realized that I was potentially lost as hell and low on gas. Freaked me right the hell out.

Oh, one more thing. Always, always, always fuel up your car before you decide to explore a legendary haunted road in the middle of nowhere when July heat turns everything into an oven. A word to the wise as well as the foolish.

One of the many pieces of graffiti I saw on the road. “We all fall down”, indeed.

On the episode, I mentioned an investigation conducted on the road by Sonshine Paranormal in Fort Worth. They snapped a photo of the Woman in White, which you can see here. Check out this page for a bit of backstory on the history of Stagecoach Road.

I have always been fascinated by ghost stories. Well, fascinated and terrified. I wasn’t really allowed to watch horror movies as a kid. Religious upbringing and all that. I actually didn’t see “The Exorcist” until I was in my mid-20s so I was pretty out of the loop for a few years in regards to scary films. When I was about 10, I watched “Scream” at a friend’s house and my heart nearly beat out of my chest. Everyone else thought it was no big deal but scary stories and movies had more power and import for me since they were entirely verboten in my household.

I got all my ghost stories from books of terrifying tales and late-night legends around the campfire in Boy Scouts. In a way, that was even more terrifying than a horror movie because I was forced to fill in the gaps and details with my wildly overcharged imagination. I distinctly recall working myself up until I was actually shaking from fear simply by letting creepy scenarios play out in my head.

This fascination with the paranormal and the frightening things that lurk in the dark continues for me even today. When I first moved back to Longview in 2011, I spent many nights staying up late watching “Ghost Adventures”. Yeah, I know it’s a corny show and there are allegations that much of it was staged. Still, I had no friends, no job and little to do so I’d plunk down in a chair and suck up marathons of this show. I’d wander through the dark house to smoke a cigarette on the back porch and nearly jump at shadows as my mind raced with thoughts of EVPs and mysteriously thrown objects.

Watching that show really made me want to try ghost hunting. I had no equipment, no money and no haunted locations to explore but the desire was there all the same. Once, while over at my girlfriend’s house, we heard strange noises from her daughter’s room, which was empty at the time. I took out my phone and conducted an impromptu EVP session. I got no eerie, disembodied voices on the recording but I still thought it was a fascinating experience.

Now, I’m very lucky to be good friends with a guy who has actually been on many ghost hunts right here in East Texas. He’s conducted his own ghost tours and gone on hunts with official paranormal groups in Tyler. In addition to having this fascinating hobby, he’s also a world-class storyteller, probably the best one I know.

His name is Adam and I’m confident that you’ll dig his tales of haunted houses and spooky locations. I sat down with him to listen to a few of his ghosting stories. I enjoyed them so much that I’m sure I’ll have him back on the Dispatch to relate more tales. Check out our conversation and, if you like his style (as I’m sure you will), be sure to check out his Twitch stream. I’ve been on the stream a few times and it’s doing really well so be sure to show him some love. Enjoy the episode, fellow travelers through Nowhere.

Ever been on a lake where the Spanish moss hangs like spiderwebs and shadows dart beneath the surface of the green-brown water? There’s one in my corner of the world that has a story to tell.

Caddo Lake was part of my childhood. I swam in it, canoed on it and fished in it, albeit unsuccessfully. I knew it had a history but I was scant on details.

I decided to tell you about this lake for two reasons:

My own unbridled curiosity.

It’s a damn good story.

History often bears out the telling. In fact, it frequently demands it.

There were people here, long before white folks showed up. Matter of fact, they were doing a very good job of running the place until they were abruptly and violently usurped from the symbiotic relationship they had with the area.

There’s no accounting for the greed of men who come from far away for the sole purpose of taking what they want.

But the land remembers. Though the people are gone, the trees, the hollow places and the still air in the forest are possessed of a keen recollection.

You all know what happens when you do wrong for a long enough stretch of time. It catches up to you.

I’ll tell you about one way in which Caddo reached up and delivered vengeance on the people who tried to claim it. You see, there are some kinds of wild that you can’t tame. We’d do well to remember that.

The 1980s were big and they were loud. Big, loud music and bigger, louder hair. When you think about this decade, you probably picture Poison music videos and d-bags in Armani suits snorting coke in the bathroom. I basically hate this whole decade, though I was born in it. (True, there were a few bright spots: Nirvana’s first album, the Pixies, Violent Femmes, the NES and a couple of great horror flicks.)

We might forget that small towns still existed in that weird and wild decade. They were just as small and insignificant as they are today, though perhaps the mustaches were a bit more heinous back then.

Okay, that’s enough joking. This is a serious episode.

You heard about Kilgore, Texas in Part 1 of Creepy Sh#t. Well, it was much the same in the ’80s as when I went to school there from 2005 to 2007. But one hot, ugly day, something happened in Kilgore that would send a shiver down the necks of local folks for the next two decades.

An empty restaurant, scattered trash, everything in disarray. That was the first discovery in a sickening chain of events that preceded the sight of a gruesome crime scene. It was and is the worst murder that town has ever seen.

Five lives, snuffed out in the dirt.

Few things are as terrifying as random, sudden violence. Listen in to learn about the mass murder that sent a small town reeling and set off a manhunt that didn’t conclude until just a few years ago.

Have you ever seen one of the many horror movies set in a rural area? Whether they’re supposed to take place in modern times or in a bygone era, in many of these films you will see a character that can only be described as a religious nutjob. Bible-thumpers, fire and brimstone preachers and even cannibalistic commune members are cast as representatives of the zealots and whackos who pervert religion into something purely evil.

In case you were wondering, no, we’re not all like that down here. Do we have religious bigots and a high watermark of prejudice? You betcha. But the folks who proselytize the harder-edged flavors of faith don’t often ascend the ranks of crazy to claim the title of murderer or psychopath.

That being said, religious prejudice is an ugly stain on what could be, and one day may well be, a truly progressive and inclusive area of the country. We realize that some of these folks are holding us back. Trust me, we’re working on it.

I am a staunch defendant of the right to freedom of (and from) religion and I am a vicious opponent of intolerance, whether it’s from or towards religious folks. I grew up in church and the vast majority of these people are hardworking, kind, big-hearted people who would bend over backwards for you if you showed up hungry and in trouble on their doorstep.

Not all of them, though. Some of them distrust science, others actively hate and mock it. Some of them vote Republican, others lean so far right they’re essentially bumping elbows with fascism. Some folks take it a bit too far, is what I’m getting at. This, I believe, is the source of the rumor about the religious crazies who wield pitchforks and slay teens on the big screen.

I sat down with my friend Sam to talk about the ways that blind religious devotion can hurt, and even ruin, relationships. Sometimes you can believe something so strongly that you can’t see around it to notice that you’re hurting yourself and others.

Tune in to see why the demons we can’t see may be the creepiest of all.

Welcome to The Nowhere Dispatch. In this very first installment of Creepy Sh#t, I’ll tell you about one of the creepiest events in my life. This episode speaks to the spirit of the Creepy Sh#t series, or at least what I’m hoping to accomplish with these recordings. You see, this series isn’t about ghosts, goblins and all of the various things that go bump in the night.

Rather, it’s about the tickling feeling you feel on the back of your neck when you know that something is not where it should be. It’s about the frightening weight you feel in your guts when you see that what you thought was a shadow simply…isn’t one.

It’s about the close space between what’s real and what can’t possibly be happening. It’s about the inexplicable and the unknowable, the kinds of things that you forget about until, well, you remember and then you can’t shake the feeling that you just can’t possibly wrap your head around the event.

One day, in college, my friends and I took a trip into the woods. What we found there has stuck with me to this day and there are some questions that I don’t believe that I will ever shake about the painting.